Home health care workers to get union rights

Blagojevich order will affect as many as 20,000 in state

February 17, 2003|By Brett McNeil, Tribune staff reporter.

Saying he was making good on a campaign promise, Gov. Rod Blagojevich Sunday told an audience of union janitors that he will sign an executive order allowing as many as 20,000 Illinois home health care workers to unionize.

The order could come as early as Monday, Blagojevich said, and would affect those health care workers employed by agencies doing business with the state. Illinois law currently allows these workers to organize but prohibits them from unionizing as a group, the governor said.

Almost 2,000 janitors from Service Employee International Union Local 1, who were gathered for a meeting inside the Cadillac Palace Theater, greeted the announcement enthusiastically--and with good reason. Half of the home health care workers already unionized in Illinois are SEIU members. The executive order opens the door to 10,000 possible new dues-paying members.

As a congressman, Blagojevich was one of a handful of congressional Democrats who opposed legislation that federalized the jobs of airport security workers. When those jobs were private, SEIU represented many security screeners. After his vote in the House, Blagojevich last winter reported receiving a $250,000 donation from the service employees' union.

And now that he's in office, Blagojevich said, "I'm in a position to do things to help working men and women."

Though short on specifics, the governor said that over the next four years he intends to introduce legislation that would raise the state's minimum wage, provide prescription drug coverage for seniors and mandate equal pay for women.

"I'm not governor just to balance a budget. I'm governor to help people," Blagojevich said.

And as they set out on contract negotiations this week, janitors from Local 1 are hoping the governor will help them land a new three-year pact that includes, among other things, better pay for suburban members and a better health plan for all SEIU janitors.

According to union statistics, Local 1 represents 15,000 Chicago area janitors. Downtown workers currently start at $9.10 per hour, while their suburban counterparts make $8 per hour to start. Though downtown janitors have a pension plan, suburban union members do not.

Local 1 Vice President Chris Andersen told the audience that electing Blagojevich was an important step in winning contract concessions.

"Politics is union business and any gains at the bargaining table can be lost in Springfield," Andersen said.

Tom Balanoff, Local 1's president, made the point more plainly.

"We can't have a better ally supporting us" than Blagojevich, Balanoff said. "We elected a person who is going to be with us through thick and thin."

The current janitors' contract expires April 6, and union negotiators are scheduled to begin meeting with downtown and suburban building owners next week. According to Local 1 spokesman Ken Munz, the new three-year contract directly affects 5,000 downtown and 4,500 suburban workers. It also sets the standard, Munz said, for unionized janitors working in local universities as well as those employed by private firms that contract with the Chicago Public Schools.

During their last contract negotiation in 2000, SEIU janitors walked off the job both downtown and in the suburbs. Loop-area workers struck for a day; their suburban colleagues were out for two weeks.

According to Munz, the union now represents approximately 95 percent of downtown janitors and 75 percent of suburban janitors.

After a business meeting that followed Blagojevich's address, Local 1 workers and their families filed out of the theater and onto Randolph Street in a display of solidarity. Shaking homemade noisemakers and beating on five-gallon buckets--and with one guy bleating on a bugle--the workers marched toward State Street, then off to Federal Plaza at Dearborn and Adams Streets.